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Monday, February 24, 2014

Ghost Storm (2011)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movie Ghost Storm (2011).

Third Syfy original in Bad Horror February. Only three out of eight were from Syfy. This is only real horror movie out of those three. Or at least most like real horror movie. Many ways this is like all the other disaster Syfy originals. But this has supernatural disaster instead of more natural like Sharknado. This is not as over the top as other Syfy originals. It shows lack of horror experience by changing the rule during the movie.

There is ghost smoke that kills people. First it has to touch you to kill you. Later it can kill you using electric devices and sockets. Even mobile phones. It started to use those, when people locked themselves out of smokes reach. When it couldn't use electric sockets, it could used pipelines and turned into blood, which opened cracks under taped doors. People were in church. They were safe there, until it was time for panic. Then smoke killed people without any problems. Seconds before it couldn't do anything to them. Nobody opened doors. Nothing changed in way, that would have allowed smoke to kill people. Only rules changed. Movie needed panic, so it changed the rules.

Another thing making this movie confusing, is over use of twists. Just when you think, you figured it out, there is a twist. To be honest, some of twists were actually good ones. Like smoke killing the priest didn't change anything. Hero expected that and we should have trust hero, because hero is always right. Somehow it felt like hero could be wrong this time. That would have been good twist too. Build for that scene was great. You couldn't be sure what will happen. I mean that in good way. Many times you couldn't know what will happen because movie didn't follow its own rules. But that scene and build up was good one.

It was interesting choice to kill almost every character except hero and his family. I had to think, did anyone else survive. There were few extras, who survived at church. But everyone, who did any acting and wasn't part of family got killed. Some disaster Syfy originals are quite deadly to characters, but I don't remember any of them to be this deadly. This happened in island. It felt like whole island died.

Ghost Storm refers to ghosts of dead cult, the ghost smoke. Ghosts got free, when lightning stroke to their memorial breaking it. First they killed people when no-one watched. After few kills, they started to kill everyone they reached. Mystery of the movie is, how cult members actually died. There were points, where we were led to believe, the cult could be innocent and only wants to correct wrong doings against them. Or it was just me who thought that, because usually haunting ghosts are like that and they leave, when they have had their revenge. How ghost were destroyed was so stupid, I don't want to remember anything about it. There was one innocent soul among ghosts and it resonated on different frequency than other souls. Heroes sent weather balloon into ghost storm and enhanced innocent souls frequency. That killed supernatural ghost storm.

Movie wasn't as bad as I expected. It had good moments and the mystery was interesting. It felt like this was ment to be serious movie unlike some other Syfy originals. Biggest problem was changing the rules during the movie and second biggest was too many twists. With few changes this could have been good movie. If ghosts wanted the priest and left after they got him, I would have liked this movie. There were problems before that, but biggest problems were after that.